English Archers at Agincourt in the St Albans Chronicle, about 1422
The battle of Agincourt, 1415, illuminated about 1422 in Thomas Walsingham's St Albans Chronicle (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 6, f. 243). The archers are drawn as the chronicler's audience imagined them; what the miniature cannot show is the decade of statutes, purchasing and compulsory practice that put them there.
An English army could field thousands of archers because English law made it possible. Statutes reserved yew imported in every wine cargo for bowstaves, ordered Sunday practice at the butts and restricted competing sports, and royal purchasing agents bought arrows and staves in bulk years before a campaign. The bow itself was cheap; the supply chain and the trained arm behind it were not. This miniature was made within a decade of Agincourt, at St Albans, and is one of the earliest English depictions of the battle. See yew, statutes and the supply chain behind the English longbow.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
